Environmental Stewardship Study Guide

The May 2008 The Lutheran features a cover topic "Stewarding God's creation," with a study guide on p. 19.


The author of the guide, Robert C. Blezard, has a MDiv from Boston University with some additional work at Lutheran seminaries at Gettysburg, PA and Philadelphia. I haven't been to seminary and I've only had enough science (4 years in high school, 1 year in college) to meet graduation requirements. But folks, this guide is not a guide, it is a political tract.

How do you write a study guide for a Christian journal that doesn't guide, doesn't encourage study, isn't Biblical, isn't accurate historically and isn't scientific? Is it any wonder ELCA is losing members to more conservative denominations who have something to say, or to agnosticism which says, I don't know?

For starters, "stewardship" isn't a "clunky term." Adding a suffix to a verb or noun is a perfectly acceptable way to create another noun--kinship, friendship, guardianship, etc. It's not clunky; it's the way our language expands on an idea. Why the author thought the word even needed explanation, I don't know--Christians have been having "stewardship Sunday" forever. And why chose the most narrow definition of steward, i.e., NOT the owner, when it means manager, agent, superviser and director?

And how does a pastor/writer ask "Who's world is it anyway? Who created it?" without offering a few Bible verses? It's unreasonable for the writer to assume the participants have been taught anything except evolution in school, everything and everyone evolved from a blob of something or a big blast, unless they were homeschooled! I attended elementary school in the 1940s and 1950s and even I only learned evolution--several shifting versions and different timelines. Here's a few suggestions for Pastor Blezard:

Gen. 1:1, Ps 90:2, Jeremiah 10:6, Isaiah 43:10, Revelation 4:11, Job 38:4-7.

Why waste limited space (it's a one page guide) with poorly constructed questions guaranteed to get a one word answer such as,

"If a steward of a plantation farms in a way that depletes the soil and jeopardizes future cultivation, is that good stewardship?"

A plantation? Hey! bring it on home--ever heard of a farm, garden or flower pot? Then he goes on to present only two models of how billions of people in thousands of cultures have viewed the earth, either

1) endless and indestructible or 2) finite and fragile.

My area of research was agricultural journals of the 19th century, and be assured there were minimally educated people with great sophistication on how to care for and improve the land (and organizations such as extension to teach those who didn't know), and in most cultures people knew enough about their local living conditions, forests, deserts, and mountains not to contaminate them.

Along with endless questions and no Biblical references, the author makes statements with no footnotes that may or may not be true, but we know he believes them.

We are now 6 billion strong and the Earth is showing great signs of strain

Larry Rasmussen says the Hebrew words are better rendered "to serve and protect." (Genesis 2:15)

Use of Earth (note the capital letter) resources, both renewable and nonrenewable, is escalating at an alarming rate, with dire consequences.

Global warming is just one consequence, along with a shrinking wildlife habitat, dwindling freshwater supplies, collapse of fisheries, species extinction, and degradation of air and water.

Scientists say these pressures imperil the capacity of the planet to sustain life.

Not a reference or footnote. And who is Larry Rasmussen? His neighbor? Cousin?

Then comes a long list of questions (Exercise 4) that just beg for a few statistics if they are going to be discussed. I write a lot about buildings, consumerism, food, applicances, etc., yet off the top of my head, if I had to discuss with fellow church members the size of houses and cars in my life time, we'd be reduced to reminiscing about the family Chevy and grandma's house.

I'm bullish on protecting Lake Erie and keeping the western states from piping our fresh water to deserts that were never intended to be agricultural land, but Exercise 5 is really weak. He seems stuck back in the 1970s when no one swam in the Great Lakes and there was no regulation of waste (or when the mid-west still had industries).

Again, he gives an either or statement:

Should human health or economic interests come first in making decisions?

When DDT was removed from the international market, was the human health of the Africans considered, or just a few Americans who wanted to run free and barefoot through the grass birdwatching? Let's define some terms here. Economics for who? Haitians? Rwandans? Maybe they'd like some of the lifestyle we denigrate as "poverty." Maybe they'd just once like the opportunity to be overweight or obese.

Since the first paragraph says,

"God gave us a perfect home, full of life and resources, and charges us to take care of it,"

I think it would be appropriate for a Lutheran pastor to mention the Fall. The world isn't perfect, Pastor, and hasn't been for thousands of years. Creation ended with God's stamp of approval and he pronounced it VERY GOOD. Not a single industry, business, government, culture or smoke stack messed it up. Man was deceived by Satan, began to doubt, then denied what God said, and then disobeyed. Deceit, doubt, denial and disobedience continue to this day, and is probably most evident in the pantheism of global warmism and worship of the environment and "Mother Earth."

God has the solution for sin, and the first paragraph would have been the perfect spot to insert the name of Jesus and his work on our behalf on the cross. I think it's good to always let your readers know where you're coming from, and Jesus' name appears no where in this guide for Lutheran Christians. So next time. . . let's put it right up front and go from there.